Video

Sorted out transcripts and subtitles to make your online videos accessible? This is important, but there are other accessibility considerations which are often overlooked. Here are some other things you must consider.

Our JW Player Controls is an attempt to get around the limitations for access that Flash presents, to provide a richer user interface to the JW FLV Player, and to enhance the contrast and readability of captions by providing an alternate viewing area for caption content.

Words go so well with video. They can give an emotional punch to a scene or simply announce what is going to happen next. I love using romantic quotes, Bible passages, and other forms of text in my work. The best part is that you can be just as creative with how those words are presented as you are in picking out the text in the first place.

Screen video alone is not enough. You need to humanize your content by getting in front of the camera and engaging your audience. And no, I’m not talking about long-winded monologues either. Several 5-7 second talking-head elements can go a long way toward winning over and maintaining the interest of your audience.

You can use the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Video Workshop to start learning about any application you're interested in, whether you own it or not. The Video Workshop shares expertise from across Adobe and the Adobe community--you'll learn tasks, tips, and tricks from leading designers, developers, and Adobe experts. There are introductory videos for new users, and more experienced users can find videos on new features and key techniques.

Animated characters have been a popular research theme, but the respective desktop applications have not been well-received by end-users. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of an animated character for presenting information and navigating music videos within an interactive television (ITV) application. Information was displayed over music video clips with two alternative user interfaces: 1) semi-transparent information overlays, 2) an animated character. For this purpose, the differences between ITV and desktop computing motivated the adaptation of the traditional usability evaluation techniques. The evaluation revealed that users reported higher affective quality with the animated character user interface. Although the success of animated characters in desktop productivity applications has been limited, there is growing evidence that animated characters might be viable in a domestic environment for leisure activities, such as interactive TV.

The development of 3D animation systems has been driven primarily by a hyper-realist ethos, and 3D computer graphic (CG) features have broadly complied with this agenda. As a counterpoint to this trend, some researchers, technologists and animation artists have explored the possibility of creating more expressive narrative output from 3D animation environments. This article explores 3D animation aesthetics, technology and culture in this context.

When I first read about the AVCHD format with its use of MPEG4-AVC (H.264) video compression at a maximum of 24 mbps versus HDV which uses the older MPEG-2 format at 25 mbps, I was very excited about the new format. My enthusiasm dampened when I read the fine print that actual AVCHD implementation only uses 13 to 17 mbps MPEG4-AVC for compatibility with cheaper storage devices. Take a look at the screenshots below and it pains me to see how much detail is lost in the newer HD format.

What are the reasons videoconferencing seems to be flourishing when so many other technologies are being challenged? The following will be the world according to Max and five reasons why I think videoconferencing is having its heyday.

People often turn down the chance to be interviewed because they're nervous, or afraid they'll say the wrong thing. Instead, think of the interview as a golden opportunity for you to convey your message. If perceptions about you, your school, or youth in general have been wrong in the past, this is your chance to set the record straight.

Use of online video has grown faster than the use of accessibility in online video. Though bandwidth costs for video files can still be high compared to ordinary text-and-graphics Web pages, it is nonetheless easy to digitize video and post it online. It's easier to broadcast your video to the world via the Internet than it is to get the same video on television. Online multimedia are a useful and valid new medium of communication - for most people.

CamStudio is a free and open-source software package for Microsoft Windows that is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

I have spent the last two weeks switching between Captivate and Camtasia Studio. Talk about schizophrenic. I spent a lot of time trying to remember which command I had to use in which program, but overall it’s been an interesting experience.

There are two methods for adding captions in QuickTime. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. The first allows you to maintain a single file, making the captioned video easier to distribute. The second approach allows you to easily deliver a captioned and non-captioned version of your movie, but requires an understanding of SMIL (it's not too hard).

RealPlayer uses SMIL to combine media content with a RealText (.rt) file. The .rt file contains the captions themselves and information about how and when they should appear. The SMIL file is really just a pointer file. It contains information about where and how your captions and media content should display.

Windows Media Player adds captions using Microsoft's Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI). SAMI, like SMIL, which is used by Quicktime and RealPlayer, is an XML-based text language. A SAMI file contains the captions and definitions for how and when the captions should display.

While putting together a good tutorial movie for your blog or for an article you’re writing requires some thought and preparation, and would benefit from extra time spent on post-processing, the good news is that capturing screen shots and screen movies can be done inexpensively on a Mac. Although I take a glance at the wider context of preparing an entire tutorial and give you some tips along the way, my focus here is on the low-cost software you can use.

Recent studies suggest that classroom collaboration is not always successful. We designed a course that motivates students to provide adequate help for writers. In this course
college students studying to become technical
communicators mentored high school students in
language arts and content area courses. In order
to overcome barriers of schedules, distances, and
resources, we created a multimedia system that
combined face-to-face communication and
networking in one configuration. We
collaborated with University of Minnesota
groups, local high school personnel, US WEST
Communications, Inc., and Compression Labs,
Inc. in the development of the system.

After the sad demise of Stage6.com I was looking for the best format for publishing high definition videos (specifically 960x540) using free tools or those I already own such as Sony Vegas Pro or On2 Flix Pro.I tried a few options and below are 5 contenders for comparison.